It’s hard to know where to start with Eduard Limonov, the subject of Kirill Serebrennikov’s explosive new film, Limonov: The Ballad. The radical Russian author and political leader, who died in 2020, left the Soviet Union in the mid-’70s after ruffling the KGB’s feathers through his outspoken poetry. He spent most of his 30s in New York, where he experienced a range of living conditions, going from being in abject poverty to working as a butler for an Upper East Side millionaire. His semi-autobiographical novel, It’s Me, Eddie (1979), covered the grimiest of those years in astoundingly graphic detail, including a sexual encounter with a homeless man that doubled as his (or at least the character’s) queer awakening.
After returning to Russia, Limonov cofounded the National Bolshevik Party and, later, the Other Russia, extremist political factions that have been described as both far-left and far-right. Among his last notable stances was supporting the Russian annexation of Crimea.
So, yeah: a tough guy to wrap your head around. But Serebrennikov, who helmed the gloriously chaotic Leto and Petrov’s Flu, makes such an attempt with gusto. (Serebrennikov has allegedly also been targeted by the Russian government for his progressive stances and work.) It may be tougher to imagine Ben Whishaw, whose best-known biopic role remains the poet John Keats in Jane Campion’s Bright Star, as such an outrageous character. And yet here he is—in the boldest, strangest, and most transformative screen performance of his decorated career. (The film premieres Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival 2024.)
“I found the whole experience fairly terrifying,” Whishaw tells me as we dig into everything that went into his fearless portrayal. Limonov: The Ballad, using the English language and liberally blending fact and (maybe) fiction, covers several decades and rejiggers its aesthetic from era to era, honoring Limonov’s chameleonic spirit. It does not shy away from his most impulsive, violent tendencies—or the brilliance and sensitivity lurking underneath them. It’s a messy mammoth of a project, one to which the BAFTA and Emmy winner dedicated himself wholly. (For a taste, watch an exclusive clip below.)
“It’s about someone living not in a rational, logical, neat-and-tidy way,” Whishaw says. “He’s someone who wanted to experience the grandeur of life, but also the abject, awful depths of it too. He wanted everything—or at least that’s what he said he wanted.”
Vanity Fair: How did this come your way?
Ben Whishaw: I got sent a version of the script in September 2020. We were still in lockdown, and I remember not having any clue about who this person was. Particularly, landing in the desolate quietness of lockdown, I remember this extraordinary bolt of energy that I got from this script and from this man that it was about. I remember calling my agent and we both said, “I don’t know what this really is, I don’t even know whether I like it, but it did something to me.” I spoke with Kirill on Zoom a bunch of times. We were still in this crazy lockdown life, and then I was just like, “Okay, I’ll do it.” I felt like it was a bit of a mad choice because I didn’t know how it was going to go. It wasn’t clear from the script how the film would be. But I had some compulsion to just leap into it, so I did.
I’d imagine that one would have some questions. What were you asking early on, in terms of figuring out the scope of the project?
The second time I read the script, I was like, Oh no, this guy’s really disturbing. There was lots in it. Maybe it’s something true, just generally, of the culture, that Kirill only told me so much. I couldn’t always get a straight answer. I said, “I don’t know how I feel about him,” and I asked him, “Why do you want to do this? Why do you want to tell this story?” This is back in 2020, and the world was different, but at the time, I remember him saying that in some ways it was a kind of self-portrait. I don’t think he meant that literally, but something in the person of Limonov, Kirill related to.